Daniele Somenzi's Canada

Canada with Daniele Somenzi posted by iviaggididaniele [22/01/2009 12:58] We land at Toronto with Air Canada with an immediate connection to Winnipeg in Manitoba. It's winter and it's cold; Winnipeg is famous for its minus 20 all winter long, in fact there's a city under the skyscrapers with warm shops, where you can walk in a shirt; all those who work in the offices of the overlying skyscrapers come down there directly by lift.

The free Shuttle bus comes to pick us up at the Air Canada terminal and takes us, driving at 80 km an hour on the icy road, but how does it manage? Then we discover it has studded tyres.

We stay one night and recover a bit from the jet lag. The hotel has an indoor pool complete with a slide; Donato and I are in it in the blink of an eye. Not everyone can swim in a pool with below-zero temperatures outside.

The next morning the free minibus takes us to the airport, but we soon discover at the Air Canada check-in that our plane doesn't leave from that airport, but from the terminal on the opposite side of the airport, so automatically we're already late.

We take a taxi and shoot over there.

The plane, a 45-year-old four-engine propeller aircraft, is there waiting for us, but... another problem, they say the plane has been fully booked by a tour group, what a blow.

In the end, with tickets in hand with matching date and flight number, they had to admit something was wrong and, since there were 2 seats on the plane, they let us on. Thank goodness.

During the flight we make friends with a gentleman from the group who, as luck would have it, is an Italian descendant who gave us some tips on what to do at Churchill. From the plane window we see big white circles on the ground; they're the hundreds of frozen lakes. Churchill is strangely connected only by plane and by train, no roads, just like the capital of Alaska, Juneau, which, having no roads to leave by, is free of car theft and crime in general, no escape routes.

We land at Churchill after more than 3 hours of flight; luckily it's sunny, as soon as we get off the plane I snap photos of everything, of course I keep filming, this video is also on YouTube under the word daniele somenzi. A minibus takes us into town, we're the only ones on board, the tour group all got on a booked coach. We ask the guy to take us to a cheap hotel, and he takes us there.

We enter the reception and the lady tells us it's all full but phones around to help us find a place; in the end she finds a guest house, at the home of a lady she knows, and says 100 Canadian dollars; only at the end will we understand it was 100 each but we manage, with a "we misunderstood each other", to pay only 100 for 2. Thank goodness.

Anyway these 2 days spent on the ice were very intense. Word spreads that we'd like to see the polar bears, so the lady takes us for a little drive around the town in her car and there we see an Arctic fox as well as many signs marking the danger limit for polar bears, which anyway you often see strolling through town as if nothing were happening; then the polar bear police spring into action, they sedate them and then carry them by van to the helicopter which, with a dangling net, flies them for tens and tens of km where it releases them free.

As soon as we finish the short tour, we visit under the snow the station where the train that leaves tomorrow morning for Winnipeg is; it takes 2 days, it would have been a great experience, too bad we hadn't thought of it earlier, after the Trans-Siberian and the Darwin-Alice Springs one.

A gentleman on board a minibus calls us: "Aren't you the ones who want to see the bear?" he says in Canadian, "get in, I'll take you," he says. They'd alerted him by radio and here's a polar bear out and about like a little rascal in search of food there in Churchill. We were very excited and happy, photos galore, it was 30 metres from us.

In the evening Donato sees the Northern Lights in the dark for the first time in his life. A lady had phoned the owner of the house where we were guests and told her the aurora was out. From the excitement Donato had gone out without putting on his jacket, but the spectacle was so fantastic that even though it was -15 he stayed outside freezing; for me 5 minutes were enough.

The lady had 3 cats in the house and upstairs in the bedroom even a rabbit, and since she was the widow of several husbands, Donato and I supposed she was a witch and that the cats and the rabbit were her transformed husbands.

The next day we walk at minus 15, well dressed, and see the helicopters taking tourists to the tundra where they'll sleep in a bungalow for a night. An excellent opportunity to spot bears up close.

We see gigantic aluminium buses with wheels 3 metres high for the tourists spotting bears; only by being up high are you protected from them.

In the nearby Hudson Bay, narwhals are often spotted; they have a long spike on their nose and are sometimes prey, along with seals, for the polar bears.

We've booked a tour, we get on board a bus like American school buses and they take us into the snowy conifer forest. There a tent is set up like those of the first gold prospectors with a wood stove inside. On the bus a rifle is clearly visible given the danger of the polar bears. We get on the sled pulled by huskies; for Donato it was the first time, I'd already been in Alaska; very beautiful to slide over the snow without noise. Strangely the pack of dogs keeps barking while we're standing still, while as soon as we set off all silent, creating a magical atmosphere.

On the return of this fantastic dogsled tour, we also do a km on the snowmobile in turns, first me and then Donato, so we completed the programme.

Back in Churchill, the time has come to return to the airport by taxi. Yes, 2 days never to be forgotten, an experience full of twists. The flight in the dark takes us back to Winnipeg. And we stay overnight in the same hotel, thinking that this really is life and not that of those who prefer to spend the same amount of money on doses of drugs.

bye